"Soldier, ask not-" It continued to ring in my ears, mockingly it seemed to me, as I drove away with Dave's pass still unsigned in my pocket. And once more the fury rose in me; and once more I swore that Dave would need no pass. I would not let him from my side for an instant during the coming day between the battle lines; and in my presence he would find his protection and his utter safety.
Chapter 9
It was six-thirty in the morning when I stepped out of the tube from the port into the lobby of my hotel in Molon. There was a gritty feeling to my nerves and a dryness to my eyes and mouth, for I had not slept for twenty-four hours. The day coming up was to be a big one, so that I could probably not look forward to rest for another twenty-four. But going two or three days without sleep is an occupational hazard of Newswork. You get hold of something, with the situation about to break at a second's warning; and you simply have to stay with it until it does.
I would be alert enough; and if it came right down to the wire, I had medication to see me through. As it happened, though, at the desk I found something that knocked the need for sleep cheerfully right out of my head.
It was a letter from Eileen. I stepped aside and pressed it open.
Dearest Tam: [she wrote]
Your letter about your plan to take Dave out of the battle lines and keep him with you as your assistant just reached here. I'm so happy I can't tell you how I feel. It never occurred to me that someone like you, from Earth, and still only an Apprentice in the Newsman's Guild, could do something like that for us.
How can I thank you? And how can you forgive me after the way I've been, not writing, or not caring what happened to you all these last five years? I haven't been very much like a sister to you. But it was because I knew how useless and helpless I was; and ever since I was a little girl I've felt you were secretly ashamed of me and just putting up with me.
And then when you told me that day in the library how it would never work out for me to marry Jamethon Black - I knew you were right, even at the time, you were only telling me the truth about myself - but I couldn't help hating you for it. It seemed to me then that you were actually proud of the fact you could stop me from going away with Jamie.
But how wrong I was, as this thing you are doing to protect Dave shows me now; and how bitterly, bitterly sorry I am for feeling the way I did. You were the only one I had left to love after Mother and Daddy died, and I did love you, Tam; but most of the time it seemed to me you didn't want me to, any more than Uncle Mathias did.
Anyway, all that has changed now, since I met Dave and he married me. Someday you must come to Alban, on Cassida, and see our apartment. We were very lucky to get one this big. It is my first real home of my own, and I think you may be a little surprised at how well we've fixed it up. Dave will tell you all about it, if you ask him - don't you think he's wonderful, for someone like me to marry, I mean? He is so kind, and so loyal. Do you know he wanted me to let you know about our marriage at the time it happened, in spite of the way I felt? But I wouldn't do it. Only of course he was right. He is always right, just as I am nearly always wrong - as you know, Tam.
But thank you, thank you again for what you're doing for Dave; and all my love goes with both of you. Tell Dave I'm writing him, too, at this same time; but I suppose his army mail won't reach him as fast as yours does you.
All my love,
Eileen
I tucked the letter and its envelope away in my pocket and went up to my room. I had meant to show him the letter; but on the way up the tube I found myself unexpectedly embarrassed at the thought of the fullness of her thanks expressed in it, and the way she had accused herself of not being the best possible sister. I had not been the best possible brother, either; and what I was doing for Dave now might look big to her, but it was nothing great really. Hardly more than the sort of thing I might do for a total stranger, by way of returning a professional favor.
She had me, in fact, feeling somewhat ashamed of myself, absurdly warmed by having heard from her so. Maybe we could turn out to exist like normal people after all. The way she and Dave felt about each other, I would undoubtedly be having nephews or nieces one of these days. Who knew - I might even end up married myself (the thought of Lisa floated inexplicably through my mind) and with children. And we might all end up with relations spread over half a dozen worlds like most of the ordinary family groups, nowadays.
Thus I refute Mathias! I thought to myself. And Padma, too.
I was daydreaming in this absurd but cheerful fashion when I reached the door of my hotel suite and remembered the question of showing Dave the letter. Better to let him wait and read his own letter, which Eileen had said was on the way, I decided. I pushed open the door and went in.
He was already up, dressed, and packed. He grinned at the sight of me; and this puzzled me for a split second until I realized that I must have come in with a smile on my own face.
"I heard from Eileen," I said. "Just a note. She says a letter's on its way to you, but it may take a day or so to catch up from being forwarded on from your army unit."
He beamed at that; and we went down to breakfast. The food helped to wake me up; and we took off the moment we were done, for Battle Headquarters of the Cassidan and local troops. Dave was handling my recording and other equipment. There was no real bulk or weight to it. I often carried it myself without hardly noticing it. But theoretically his caring for it left me free to concentrate on finer matters of reportage.
Battle Headquarters had promised me a military air-car, one of the small two-man reconnaissance jobs. When I got to the Transport Pool, however, I found myself in line behind a Field Commander who was waiting for his command car to be specially equipped. My first impulse was to put up a squawk on principle at being kept waiting. My second thought was decidedly to do no such thing. This was no ordinary Field Commander.
He was a lean, tall man with black, slightly coarse, slightly curly hair above a big-boned, but open and smiling face. I have mentioned before that I am tall, for an Earth-born man. This Field Commander was tall for a Dorsai, which of course he was. In addition he had that - that quality for which there is no name, which is the birthright of his people. Something beyond just strength, or fearsomeness, or courage. Something almost the opposite of those keyed-up qualities.
It is calmness, even; a thing beyond argument, beyond time, beyond life itself. I have been on the Dorsai planet since then, and I have seen it as well among the half-grown boys there, and in some of the children. These people can be killed - all who are born of women are mortal - but staining them through, like a dye, is the undeniable fact that together, or as individuals, they cannot be conquered. By anything. Conquest of the Dorsai character is not merely unthinkable. It is somehow not-possible.
So, all this my Field Commander automatically had, in addition to his magnificent military mind and body. But there was something strange, over and
above it all. Something that did not seem to belong in with the rest of the Dorsai character at all.
It was an odd, powerful, sunny warmth of character that lapped even upon me, standing several yards away and outside the knot of officers and men that surrounded him like elm saplings in the wind-shelter of an oak. A joy of life seemed to fountain up in this Dorsai officer, so brightly that it forced the kindling of a similar joy in those around him. Even in me, standing to one side and not - I would have said - normally too much liable to such influence.